Returning to English

May 11, 2016May 11, 2016 Tigerotor77WBruichladdich, Caledonian Canal, Fort Augustus, Glen Grant, Glenfiddich, Glenfinnan, Glenfinnan Viaduct, Islay, Isle of Skye, Kilchoman, Kilt Rock, Lagavulin, Loch Achiochtan, malting floor, mash tun, Mealt Falls, Old Man of Storr, open mash tun, pot still, Scotland, Storr, washback2 Comments

I’ve never been to the United Kingdom; the closest I’ve come, by which I mean Queen Elizabeth II is its monarch, is Canada. It was thus a bit surprising that my first stop in the UK was Scotland, which in 2014 narrowly avoided voting to separate from the United Kingdom. With no personal preference on the topic myself, I looked forward to the trip for a few reasons: I could try my ear against the Scottish accent; distillery tours were planned; and the landscapes I had seen of Scotland were enchanting, perhaps on a level with those of Norway.

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Connected but distant

May 9, 2016 Tigerotor77WD-AIUQ, Fram, Gokstad, harbor cruise, Oseberg, Oslo, Oslo Opera House, Vigeland, Vigeland Installation, Vigeland sculpture park, Viking Museum2 Comments

Over Easter weekend, I decided to make a trip out to Oslo, once again avoiding staying in my city of residence over a holiday. I wanted to see mountains and fjords, but both the weather and timing were uncooperative. It then became a race to find the cheapest way to see the city while staying indoors at key points (i.e. when it was raining), which was a challenge all its own.

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Capitulating to Choice

April 2, 2016 Tigerotor77WA320neo, Barcelona, Bunker Turo de la Rovira, Bunkers of Carmel, Catalonia, Cobla, Cobla Lluïsos de Taradell, D-AIUQ, La Seu, Lufthansa, Mies van der Rohe, Mount Tibidabo, MUHBA, Museu d'Historia de Barcelona, Museu Marítim, Plaça del Rei, Sagrada Familia, Sagrat Cor, Santa Eulàlia, Tibidabo, van der Rohe Pavilion4 Comments

I was fortunate to travel most of the weekends that I was in Stuttgart in 2011. In particular, much of my travel then (as even now, in hindsight) was focused on hiking locations, and there ended up being fewer actual visits to cities than what completed lists of suggested locations from friends would have shown. One such location was Barcelona: several friends described it as being their favorite city in their time abroad, but with mountains calling I never made it there. I finally was able to visit some friends who chose it as a temporary reprieve from the Illinois winter. Initially uneasy that I would give up on an already dry and warm winter, in hindsight I’m glad the trip worked out, because the city is a bright, lively destination. No wonder the locals stay out as long as they do!

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Chasing Elevation

March 21, 2016 Tigerotor77W777-300ER, Alps, Boeing, Boeing 777, CERN, Genève, Geneva, Genf, GVA, HB-JNA, La Muse Tragique, LX2802, LX2807, Museum d'Art et d'Histoire, Museum of Art and History, Swiss Alps, Swiss International Airlines, Switzerland, Synchrocyclotron, ZRHLeave a comment

Being so close to the mountains, I had hoped — and expected — that I could ski several times between December and April and figured that by the end of the season I would know enough about skis and my type of skiing to buy skis. A lack of being around in December and a dearth of snow in January made skiing a lot less common than thought, however, and by February I began to get fidgety about not being in mountains so close they are home. Thankfully, I was saved from the doldrums of valley life by… commercial aviation!

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Neighborly Neglect

March 20, 2016March 21, 2016 Tigerotor77WAllgäu, DB Museum, Deutsche Bahn Museum, Grünten, Jungholz, Kaiserburg Nürnberg, Museum of Communication, Nürnberg, Nuremberg castle, Oberjoch, Ofterschwang, SunsetLeave a comment

This has been a rather odd start to the year — for one, it’s the first time I’ve lived abroad in winter, but beyond that my trips have come rather unexpectedly quickly and furiously. Somehow, a trip to another German city was snuck into the itinerary, though only thanks to a visiting college friend who found time during his work trip to meet me in Nürnberg. Unfortunately, we were about a month late to make it in time to see the Christkindlmärkte, so we decided to check out the museums instead.

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Germany, and indeed much of Europe, has a rather less-limiting vacation policy than the United States and also allows the accumulation of flextime; I had both to get rid of both before the end of the year. I decided to go somewhere whose native language wasn’t one I already spoke, but also one whose fabric wasn’t completely foreign: I had little time to plan the trip, would fly back to the U.S. the day after I returned from the trip, and was hosting friends the weekend I left so had little time to prepare and pack.

The weekend of my trip east, we visited Neuschwanstein on a Saturday afternoon. One of the highlights of the castle tour is a balcony that faces mostly west. In the evening, the balcony apparently closes before the castle does, so it’s only natural that the sunset that night was spectacular. Fortunately, there is a large window on the now-locked door to the balcony, allowing me to bid farewell to mountains for a month.

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… mais pas cette semaine

November 28, 2015January 6, 2016 Tigerotor77WFurka Pass, Grimsel Pass, larches, Matterhorn, Milky Way, Stellisee, Sunset, ZermattLeave a comment

A week after the comment that there were too many people in the Zermatt area, I ended up going again. That’s a third time in a month: of the five weekends in October, I went to Switzerland for three of them and worked the other two. I left work and headed west, catching the sunset from my favorite mountain pass along the way.

This time, even though the weather was arguably even better than on the prior two trips, the trails were just about deserted.

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Simplement trop de Monde

November 3, 2015November 3, 2015 Tigerotor77WFurkastraße, Furkastrasse, Gornergrat Bahn, Matterhorn, Matterhorn reflection, Riffelsee, Rotenboden, Sunrise, Zermatt5 Comments

“… il y a simplement trop de monde,” a French hiker exclaimed as we walked by, referencing the increasing number of visitors into the city and its alpine hiking trails. And it’s true — Zermatt, or its well known mountain, anyhow, is a huge tourist draw. Its visitors office estimates roughly three million gawkers pass through each year, on average spending over 200 CHF per day. But even the prospect of needing to consistently assert that I wasn’t going to be a train-riding visitor but rather a gung-ho hiker wasn’t enough to keep me from coming back a second time this month, cheating on Rainier be damned.

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En me brossant les dents

Author: Tigerotor77W